PR 5114 

. P3 THE 

1899 

Copy 1 



UTOBIOGRAPHY AND 
LETTERS 

OF 

MRS. M. O. W. OLIPHANT 

Arranged and Edited by 

MRS. HARRY CAGHILL 

WITH TWO PORTRAITS 



-y 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 






O ^'OP"^' 



THE 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND 
LETTERS 



/'i^^ 



MRS. M;10?Wr^^^^^^^ 

Arranged and Edited by 

MRS. HARRY CAGHILL 

fFITH TWO PORTRAITS 



^ 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 






Di 3 



30090 

Copyright, rSgg, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 

TWO COPIES R£CC:iV£D. 









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ffilniljrvsitu ^rcss 

John Wilson and Son, Cambriik;f.,U. S. A. 



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AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



I. 



Windsor, \st February 1885.^ 
Twenty-one years have passed since I wrote what is on 
the opposite page.^ I have just been reading it all with 
tears ; sorry, very sorry for that poor soul who has lived 
through so much since. Twenty-one years is a little 
lifetime. It is curious to think that I was not very 
young, nearly thirty-six, at that time, and that I am not 
very old, nearly fifty-seven, now. Life, though it is short, 
is very long, and contains so much. And one does not, 
to one's consciousness, change as one's outward appear- 
ance and capabilities do. Doesn't Mrs Somerville say 
that, so far from feeling old, she was not always quite 
certain (up in the seventies) whether she was quite 
grown up ! I entirely understand the feeling, though I 
have had enough, one would think, to make one feel old. 
Since the time when that most unexpected, most terrible 
blow overtook me in Rome — where her father had died 
four years before — I have had trials which, I say it with 

^ It has been thought better to print the earlier portion, or such of it as 
might interest general readers, after this part of Mrs. Oliphant's journal, so as 
to preserve the sequence of the narrative. — Ed. 

2 See Preface, p. ix. — Ed. 



4 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

full knowledge of all the ways of mental suffering, have 
been harder than sorrow. I have lived a laborious life, 
incessant work, incessant anxiety — and yet so strange, so 
capricious is this human being, that I would not say I 
have had an unhappy life. I have said this to one or two 
friends who know faintly without details what I have had 
to go through, and astonished them. Sometimes I am 
miserable — always there is in me the sense that I may 
have active cause to be so at any moment — always the 
gnawing pangs of anxiety, and deep, deep dissatisfaction 
beyond words, and the sense of helplessness, which of 
itself is despair. And yet there are times when my heart 
jumps up in the old unreasonable way, and I am, — yes, 
happy — though the word seems so inappropriate — with- 
out any cause for it, with so many causes the other way. 
I wonder whether this is want of feeling, or mere tem- 
perament and elasticity, or if it is a special compensation 
— " Werena my heart licht I wad dee" — Grizel Hume 
must have had the same. 

I have been tempted to begin writing by George Eliot's 
life — with that curious kind of self-compassion which one 
cannot get clear of. I wonder if I am a little envious 
of her? I always avoid considering formally what my 
own mind is worth. I have never had any theory on 
the subject. I have written because it gave me pleasure, 
because it came natural to me, because it was like talking 
or breathing, besides the big fact that it was necessary 
for me to work for my children. That, however, was 
not the first motive, so that when I laugh inquiries 
off and say that it is my trade, I do it only by way 
of eluding the question which I have neither time nor 
wish to enter into. Anthony Trollope's talk about the 
characters in his books astonished me beyond measure, 
and I am totally incapable of talking about anything I 
have ever done in that way. As he was a thoroughly 
sensible genuine man, I suppose he was quite sincere in 
what he says of them, — or was it that he was driven 
into a fashion of self-explanation which belongs to the 
time, and which I am following now though in another 



SCOTCH TRAITS OF CHARACTER. 5 

way? I feel that my carelessness of asserting my 
claim is very much against me with everybody. It 
is so natural to think that if the workman himself is 
indifferent about his work, there can't be much in it 
that is worth thinking about. I am not indifferent, 
yet I should rather like to forget it all, to wipe out 
all the books, to silence those compliments about my 
industry, &c., which I always turn off with a laugh. 
I suppose this is really pride, with a mixture of Scotch 
shyness, and a good deal of that uncomprehended, 
unexplainable feeling which made Mrs Carlyle reply with 
a jibe, which meant only a whimsical impulse to take the 
side of opposition, and the strong Scotch sense of the 
absurdity of a chorus of praise, but which looks so often 
like detraction and bitterness, and has now definitely 
been accepted as such by the public in general. I don't 
find words to express it adequately, but I feel it strenu- 
ously in my own case. ' When people comment upon the 
number of books I have written, and I say that I am so 
far from being proud of that fact that I should like at 
least half of them forgotten, they stare — and yet it is 
quite true; and even here I could no more go solemnly 
into them, and tell why I had done this or that, than I 
could fly. They are my work, which I like in the doing, 
which is my natural way of occupying myself, though they 
are never so good as I meant them to be. And when 
I have said that, I have said all that is in me to say. 

I don't quite know why I should put this all down. I 
suppose because George Eliot's life has, as I said above, 
stirred me up to an involuntary confession. How I have 
been handicapped in life ! Should I have done better if 
I had been kept, like her, in a mental greenhouse and 
taken care of ? This is one of the things it is perfectly 
impossible to tell. In all likelihood our minds and our 
circumstances are so arranged that, after all, the possible 
way is the way that is best ; yet it is a little hard some- 
times not to feel with Browning's Andrea, that the men 
who have no wives, who have given themselves up to 
their art, have had an almost unfair advantage over us 



6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

who have been given perhaps more than one Lucrezia to 
take care of. And to feel with him that perhaps in the 
after-life four square walls in the New Jerusalem may be 
given for another trial ! I used to be intensely impressed 
in the Laurence Oliphants with that curious freedom 
from human ties which I have never known ; and that 
they felt it possible to make up their minds to do what 
was best, without any sort of arricrc pensce, without 
having to consider whether they could or not. Curious 
freedom ! I have never known what it was. I have 
always had to think of other people, and to plan every- 
thing — for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but 
always in subjection to the neccessity which bound me to 
them. On the whole, I have had a great deal of my own 
way, and have insisted upon getting what I wished, but 
only at the cost of infinite labour, and of carrying a 
whole little world with me whenever I moved. I have 
not been able to rest, to please myself, to take the 
pleasures that have come in my way, but have always 
been forced to go on without a pause. When my poor 
brother's family fell upon my hands, and especially when 
there was question of Frank's education, I remember that 
I said to myself, having then perhaps a little stirring of 
ambition, that I must make up my mind to think no 
more of that, and that to bring up the boys for the 
service of God was better than to write a fine novel, 
supposing even that it was in me to do so. Alas ! the 
work has been done; the education is over; my good 
Frank, my steady, good boy, is dead. It seemed rather 
a fine thing to make that resolution (though in reality I 
had no choice) ; but now I think that if I had taken the 
other way, which seemed the less noble, it might have 
been better for all of us. I might have done better work. 
I should in all probability have earned nearly as much 
for half the production had I done less; and I might 
have had the satisfaction of knowing that there was 
something laid up for them and for my old age; while 
they might have learned habits of work which now seem 



GEORGE ELIOT. 7 

beyond recall. Who can tell? I did with much labour 
what I thought the best, and there is only a might have 
been on the other side. 

In this my resolution which I did make, I was, after 
all, only following my instincts, it being in reality easier 
to me to keep on with a flowing sail, to keep my house- 
hold and make a number of people comfortable, at the 
cost of incessant work, and an occasional great crisis of 
anxiety, than to live the self-restrained life which the 
greater artist imposes upon himself. 

What casuists we are on our own behalf! — this is al- 
together self-defence. And I know I am giving myself 
the air of being an fond a finer sort of character than 
the others. I may as well take the little satisfaction to 
myself, for nobody will give it to me. No one even 
will mention me in the same breath with George Eliot. 
And that is just. It is a little justification to myself 
to think how much better off she was, — no trouble in 
all her life as far as appears, but the natural one of her 
father's death — and perhaps coolnesses with her brothers 
and sisters, though that is not said. And though her 
marriage is not one that most of us would have ven- 
tured on, still it seems to have secured her a wor- 
shipper unrivalled. I think she must have been a dull 
woman with a great genius distinct from herself, some- 
thing like the gift of the old prophets, which they 
sometimes exercised with only a dim sort of perception 
what it meant. But this is a thing to be said only 
with bated breath, and perhaps further thought on the 
subject may change even my mind. She took herself 
with tremendous seriousness, that is evident, and was 
always on duty, never relaxing, her letters ponderous 
beyond description — and those to the Bray party giving 
one the idea of a mutual improvement society for the 
exchange of essays. 

Let me be done with this — I wonder if I will ever have 
time to put a few autobiographical bits down before I 
die. I am in very little danger of having my life written, 



8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

and that is all the better in this point of view — for 
what could be said of me? George Eliot and George 
Sand make me half inclined to cry over my poor little 
unappreciated self — " Many love me {i.e.y in a sort of 
way), but by none am I enough beloved." These two 
bigger women did things which I have never felt the least 
temptation to do — but how very much more enjoyment 
they seem to have got out of their life, how much more 
praise and homage and honour ! I would not buy their 
fame with these disadvantages, but I do feel very small, 
very obscure, beside them, rather a failure all round, 
never securing any strong affection, and throughout my 
life, though I have had all the usual experiences of 
woman, never impressing anybody, — what a droll little 
complaint! — why should I? I acknowledge frankly that 
there is nothing in me — a fat, little, commonplace woman, 
rather tongue-tied — to impress any one; and yet there 
is a sort of whimsical injury in it which makes me sorry 
for myself, 

Feb. Wi. 

Here, then, for a little try at the autobiography. I 
ought to be doing some work, getting on a little in 
advance for to-morrow, which gives a special zest to 
doing nothing : ^ to doing what has no need to be done — 
and Sunday evenings have always been a time to f ant as ti- 
care, to do what one pleased ; and I have dropped out of 
the letter I used to do on these occasions, having — which, 
by the way, is a little sad when one comes to think of it 
— no one to write to, of anything that is beneath the 
surface. Curious ! I had scarcely realised it before. 
Now for a beginning. 

I remember nothing of Wallyford, where I was born, 
but opened my eyes to life, so far as I remember, in the 
village of Lasswade, where we lived in a little house, I 
think, on the road to Dalkeith. I recollect the wintry 
road ending to my consciousness in a slight ascent with 

1 This is exactly wliat Sir Walter says in his Uiary, only published in 1S90, 
so I was like him in this without knowing it. 



EARLY MEMORIES. 9 

big ash-trees forming a sort of arch ; underneath which I 
fancy was a toll-bar, the way into the world appropriately 
barred by that turnpike. But no, that was not the way 
into the world; for the world was Edinburgh, the coach 
for which, I am almost sure, went the other way through 
the village and over the bridge to the left hand, starting 
from somewhere close to Mr Todd the baker's shop, of 
which I have a faint and kind recollection. It was by 
that way that Frank came home on Saturday nights to 
spend Sunday at home, walking out from Edinburgh 
(about six miles) to walk in again on Monday in the dark 
winter mornings. I recollect nothing about the summer 
mornings when he set out on that walk, but remember 
vividly like a picture the Monday mornings in winter; 
the fire burning cheerfully and candles on the breakfast- 
table, all dark but with a subtle sense of morning, 
though it seemed a kind of dissipation to be up so long 
before the day. I can see myself, a small creature seated 
on a stool by the fire, toasting a cake of dough which 
was brought for me by the baker with the prematurely 
early rolls, which were for Frank. (This dough was the 
special feature of the morning to me, and I suppose I 
had it only on these occasions.) And my mother, who 
never seemed to sit down in the strange, little, warm, 
bright picture, but to hover about the table pouring out 
tea, supplying everything he wanted to her boy (how 
proud, how fond of him ! — her eyes liquid and bright with 
love as she hovered about) ; and Frank, the dearest of 
companions so long — then long separated, almost alien- 
ated, brought back again at the end to my care. How 
bright he was then, how good always to me, how fond of 
his little sister! — impatient by moments, good always. 
And he was a kind of god to me — my Frank, as I always 
called, him. I remember once weeping bitterly over a 
man singing in the street, a buttoned-up, shabby-genteel 
man, whom, on being questioned why I cried, I ac- 
knowledged I thought like my Frank. That was when 
he was absent, and my mother's anxiety reflected in a 



lO AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

child's mind went, I suppose, the length of fancying that 
Frank too might have to sing in the street. (He would 
have come off very badly in that case, for he did not 
know one tune from another, much less could he sing a 
note !) How well I recollect the appearance of the man 
in his close-buttoned black coat, with his dismal song, 
and the acute anguish of the thought that Frank might 
have come to that for anything I knew. Frank, how- 
ever, never gave very much anxiety ; it was Willie, poor 
Willie, who was our sore and constant trouble — Willie, 
who lives still in Rome, as he has done for the last two- 
or three-and-twenty years — nearly a quarter of a century 
— among strangers who are kind to him, wanting noth- 
ing, I hope, yet also having outlived everything. I 
shrank from going to see him when I was in Italy, which 
was wrong; but how can I return to Rome, and how 
could he have come to me? — poor Willie! the hand- 
somest, brightest of us all, with eyes that ran over with 
fun and laughter — and the hair which we used to say he 
had to poll, like Absalom, so many times a-year. Alas ! 

What I recollect in Lasswade besides the Monday 
morning aforesaid is not much. I remember standing 
at the smithy with brother Willie, on some occasion 
when the big boy was very unwillingly charged to take 
his little sister somewhere or other, — standing in the 
dark, wondering at the sparks as they flew up and the 
dark figures of the smith and his men ; and I remember 
playing on the road opposite the house, where there was 
a low wall over which the Esk and the country beyond 
could be seen (I think), playing with two little kittens, 
who were called Lord Brougham and Lord Grey. Tt 
must have been immediately after the passing of the 
Reform Bill, and I suppose this was why the kittens bore 
such names. We were all tremendously political and 
Radical, my mother especially and Frank. Likewise I 
recollect with the most vivid clearness on what must have 
been a warm still summer day, lying on my back in the 
grass, the little blue speedwells in which are very distinct 



THE OLD TYPE OF SCOTCH MOTHER. I I 

before me, and looking up into the sky. The depths of 
it, the blueness of it, the way in which it seemed to move 
and fly and avoid the gaze which could not penetrate be- 
yond that profound unfathomable blue, — the bliss of 
lying there doing nothing, trying to look into it, growing 
giddy with the effort, with a sort of vague realisation of 
the soft swaying of the world in space ! I feel the giddi- 
ness in my brain still, and the happiness, as if I had been 
the first discoverer of that wonderful sky. All my little 
recollections are like pictures to which the meaning, 
naturally, is put long afterwards. I did not know the 
world moved or anything about it, being under six at 
most ; but I can feel the sensation of the small head 
trying to fix that great universe, and in the effort growing 
dizzy and going round. 

We left Lasswade when I was six, my father's busi- 
ness taking him to' Glasgow, to the misery of my 
mother, who was leaving her boys behind her. My 
father is a very dim figure in all that phantasmagoria. 
I had to be very quiet in the evenings when he was at 
home, not to disturb him ; and he took no particular 
notice of me or of any of us. My mother was all in all. 
How she kept everything going, and comfortably going, 
on the small income she had to administer, I can't tell ; 
it seems like a miracle, though of course we lived in the 
utmost obscurity and simplicity, she herself doing the 
great part of all that was done in the house. I was the 
child of her age — not her old age, but the sentiment was 
the same. She had lost three children one after another 
— one a girl about whom I used to make all sorts of 
dream-romances, to the purport that Isabella had never 
died at all, and was brought back in this or that mirac- 
ulous way to make my mother and myself supremely 
happy. I was born after that period of misery, and 
brought back life to my mother's heart. She was of the 
old type of Scotch mothers, not demonstrative, not 
caressing, but I know now that I was a kind of idol to 



12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

her from my birth. My clothes were all made by her 
tender hands, finer and more beautifully worked than 
ever child's clothes were; my under garments fine linen 
and trimmed with little deHcate laces, to the end that 
there might be nothing coarse, nothing less than ex- 
quisite, about me ; that I might grow up with all the 
delicacies of a woman's ideal child. 

But she was very quick in temper notwithstanding 
this, and was very far from spoiling me. I was not 
petted nor called by sweet names. But I know now that 
my mere name meant everything to her. I was her 
Maggie — what more could mortal speech find to say.? 
How little one realises the character or individuality of 
those who are most near and dear. It is with difficulty 
even now that I can analyse or make a character of her. 
She herself is there, not any type or variety of human- 
kind. She was taller than I am, not so stout as I 
have grown. She had a sweet fresh complexion, and a 
cheek so soft that I can feel the sensation of putting mine 
against it still, and beautiful liquid brown eyes, full of 
light and fun and sorrow and anger, flashing and melting, 
terrible to look at sometimes when one was in disgrace. 
Her teeth projected, when she had teeth, but she lost 
and never replaced them, which did not, I think, harm 
her looks very much — at least, not in my consciousness. 
I am obliged to confess that when I remember her first 
she wore a brown front ! according to the fashion of the 
time — which fashion she detested, and suddenly aban- 
doning it one day, appeared with the most lovely white 
hair, which gave a charm of harmonious colour to her 
beautiful complexion and brown eyes and eyebrows, but 
which was looked upon with consternation by her con- 
temporaries, who thought the change wickedness. She 
had grown very early grey like myself, but was at this 
period, I should think, about forty-five. She wore al- 
ways a cap with white net quilled closely round her face, 
and tied under her chin with white ribbons ; and in 
.winter always a white shawl ; her dress cut not quite to 



A DANGEROUS FACILITY. 1 3 

her throat, and a very ample white net or cambric hand- 
kerchief showing underneath. She had read everything 
she could lay hands upon all her life, and was fond of 
quoting Pope, so that we used to call her Popish in after- 
days when I knew what Popish in this sense meant. 

She had entered into everything that was passing all 
her life with the warmest energy and animation, as was 
her nature ; was Radical and democratic and the highest 
of aristocrats all in one. She had a very high idea, 
founded on I have never quite known what, of the 
importance of the Oliphant family, so that I was 
brought up with the sense of belonging (by her side) 
to an old, chivalrous, impoverished race. I have never 
got rid of the prejudice, though I don't think our 
branch of the Oliphants was much to brag of. I would 
not, however, do anything to dispel the delusion, [if it 
is one, for my mother^s sake, who held it stoutly and 
without a doubt. Her father had been a prodigal, and 
I fear a profligate, whose wife had not been able to 
bear with him (my mother would have borne anything 
and everything for her children's sake, to keep their 
home intact), and her youth had been a troubled and 
partially dependent one, — dependent upon relations on 
the one side, whom it was a relief, I suppose, to the 
high-spirited girl to think as much inferior in race as 
they were in the generosity and princeliness of nature 
which was hers. So far as that went she might have 
been a queen. 

I understand the Carlyles, both he and she, by 
means of my mother as few people appear able to do. 
She had Mrs Carlyle's wonderful gift of narrative, and 
she possessed in perfection that dangerous facility of 
sarcasm and stinging speech which Sir Walter attrib- 
utes to Queen Mary. Though her kindness was inex- 
haustible and her love boundless, yet she could drive 
her opponent of the moment half frantic with half-a- 
dozen words, and cut to the quick with a flying phrase. 
On the other side, there was absolutely nothing that 



14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

she would not have done or endured for her own ; 
and no appeal to her generosity was ever made in vain. 
She was a poor woman all her life, but her instinct 
was always to give. And she would have kept open 
house if she could have had her way, on heaven knows 
how little a-year. My father was in one way very differ- 
ent. He hated strangers ; guests at his table were a 
bore to him. In his later days he would have nobody 
invited, or if guests came, retired and would not see 
them, — but he was not illiberal. 

We lived for a long time in Liverpool, where my 
father had an office in the Custom-house. I don't 
know exactly what, except that he took affidavits — which 
was a joke in the house — having a special commission 
for that purpose. We lived for some time in the North 
End (no doubt a great deal changed now, and I have 
known nothing about it for thirty years and more), 
where there was a Scotch church, chiefly for the use 
of the engineers and their families who worked in the 
great foundries. One of the first things I remember 
here was great distress among the people, on what 
account I cannot tell — I must have been a girl of 
thirteen or so, I think. A fund was raised for their 
relief, of which my father was treasurer, and both my 
brothers were drawn in to help. This was very mo- 
mentous in our family, from the fact that it was the 
means of bringing Frank, up to this time everything 
that was good except in respect to the Church, to that 
last and crowning excellence. He got interested about 
the poor, and began to come with us to church, and 
filled my mother's cup with happiness. Willie, always 
careless, always kind, ready to do anything for any- 
body, but who had already come by some defeat in 
life which I did not understand, and who was at home 
idle, took the charge of administering this charity, and 
used to go about the poor streets with a cart of coal 
behind him and his pockets stuffed with orders for 
bread and provisions of all kinds. All this I reniem- 



AFFAIRES DE CCEUR. I 5 

ber, I think, more through my mother's keen half 
anguish of happiness and pride than through my own 
recollection. That he had done so poorly for himself 
was bitter, but that he did so well for the poor was 
sweet ; oh ! and such a vindication of the bright-eyed, 
sweet-tempered unfortunate, who never was anybody's 
enemy but his own — words which were more true in 
his case than in most others. And then Frank was 
busy in the good work too, and at last a member of 
the Church, and all well. This is not to say that 
there were not domestic gusts at times. 

When I was sixteen I began to have — what shall I 
say .'' — not lovers exactly, except in the singular — but one 
or two people about who revealed to me the fact that I 
too was like the girls in the poets. I recollect distinctly 
the first compliment, though not a compliment in the 
ordinary sense of the word, which gave me that bewilder- 
ing happy sense of being able to touch somebody else's 
heart — which was half fun and infinitely amusing, yet 
something more. The speaker was a young Irishman, 
one of the young ministers that came to our little church, 
at that time vacant. He had joined Frank and me on a' 
walk, and when we were passing and looking at a very 
pretty cottage on the slope of the hill at Everton, 
embowered in gardens and shrubberies, he suddenly 
looked at me and said, " It would be Elysium." I 
laughed till I cried at this speech afterwards, though at 
the moment demure and startled. But the little incident 
remains to me, as so many scenes in my early life do, 
Hke a picture suffused with a soft delightful light : the 
glow in the young man's eyes ; the lowered tone and 
little speech aside ; the soft thrill of meaning which was 
nothing and yet much. Perhaps if I were not a novelist 
addicted to describing such scenes, I might not remember 
it after — how long.? Forty-one years. What a long 
time ! I could not have been sixteen. Then came the 
episode of J. Y., which was very serious indeed. We 
were engaged on the eve of his going away. He was to 



1 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

go to America for three years and then return for me. 
He was a good, simple, pious, domestic, kind-hearted 
fellow, fair-haired, not good-looking, not ideal at all. He 
cannot have been at all clever, and I was rather. When 
he went away our correspondence for some time was very 
full ; then I began to find his letters silly, and I suppose 
said as much. Then there were quarrels, quarrels with 
the Atlantic between, then explanations, and then dread- 
ful silence. It is amusing to look back upon, but it was 
not at all amusing to me then. My poor little heart was 
broken. I remember another scene without being able 
to explain it : my mother and myself walking home from 
somewhere — I don't know where — after it was certain 
that there was no letter, and that all was over. I think 
it was a winter night and rainy, and I was leaning on 
her arm, and the blank of the silence, and the dark and 
the separation, and the cutting off of all the dreams that 
had grown about his name, came over me and seemed to 
stop my very life. My poor little heart was broken. I 
was just over seventeen, I think. 

These were the only breaks in my early life. We lived 
in the most singularly secluded way. I never was at a 
dance till after my marriage, never went out, never saw 
anybody at home. Our pleasures were books of all and 
every kind, newspapers and magazines, which formed 
the staple of our conversation, as well as all our amuse- 
ment. In the time of my depression and sadness my 
mother had a bad illness, and I was her nurse, or at least 
attendant. I had to sit for hours by her bedside and 
keep quiet. I had no liking then for needlework, a taste 
which developed afterwards, so I took to writing. There 
was no particular purpose in my beginning except this, 
to secure some amusement and occupation for myself 
while I sat by my mother's bedside. I wrote a little book 
in which the chief character was an angelic elder sister, 
unmarried, who had the charge of a family of motherless 
brothers and sisters, and who had a shrine of sorrow in 
her life in the shape of the portrait and memory of her 



FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS. 1 7 

lover who had died young. It was all very innocent and 
guileless, and my audience — to wit, my mother and 
brother Frank — were highly pleased with it. (It was 
published long after by W. on his own account, and very 
silly I think it is, poor little thing.) I think I was then 
about sixteen. Afterwards I wrote another very much 
concerned with the Church business, in which the 
heroine, I recollect, was a girl, who in the beginning of 
the story was a sort of half-witted undeveloped creature, 
but who ended by being one of those lofty poetical 
beings whom girls love. She was called, I recollect, 
Ibby, but why, I cannot explain. I had the satisfaction 
afterwards, when I came to my full growth, of burning 
the manuscript, which was a three-volume business. I 
don't think any effort was ever made to get a publisher 
for it. 

We were living at the time in Liverpool, either in a 
house in Great Homer' Street or in Juvenal Street — very 
classical in point of name but in nothing else. Probably 
neither of these places exists any longer — very good 
houses though, at least the last. I have lately described 
in a letter in the ' St James' Gazette ' a curious experi- 
ence of mine as a child while living in one of these 
places. It was in the time of the Anti-Corn Law agita- 
tion, and I was about fourteen. There was a great deal 
of talk in the papers, which were full of that agitation, 
about a petition from women to Parliament upon that 
subject, with instructions to get sheets ruled for signa- 
tures, and an appeal to ladies to help in procuring them. 
It was just after or about the time of our great charity, 
and I was in the way of going thus from house to house. 
Accordingly I got a number of these sheets, or probably 
Frank got them for me, and set to work. Another girl 
went with me, I believe, but I forget who she was. The 
town was all portioned out into districts under the charge 
of ladies appointed by the committee, but we flung our- 
selves upon a street, no matter where, and got our papers 
filled and put all the authorised agents comically out. 
B 



1 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

Nobody could discover who we were, I took my sheets 
to the meeting of the ladies, and was much wondered 
at, being to the external eye a child, though to my own 
consciousness quite a grown-up person. The secretary 
of the association or committee, or whatever it was, 
was, I think, a Miss Hayward ; at all events her Chris- 
tian name was Lawrencina, which she wrote L'cina. 
I admired her greatly, and admired her pretty hand- 
writing and everything about her. I myself wrote 
abominably, resisting up to this time all efforts to 
teach me better ; but the circulars and notes with 
Miss L'cina's pretty name developed in me a warm 
ambition. I began to copy her writing, and mended 
in my own from that day. It did not come to very 
much, the printers would say. 

I was a tremendous politician in those days. 

I forget when it was that we moved to Birkenhead 
— not, I think, till after the extraordinary epoch of the 
publication of my first book. From the time above 
spoken of I went on writing, and somehow, I don't 
remember how, got into the history of Mrs Margaret 
Maitland. There had been some sketches from life in the 
story which, as I have said, I burned ; but that was pure 
imagination. A slight reflection of my own childhood 
perhaps was in the child Grace, a broken bit of reflection 
here and there from my mother in the picture of Mrs 
Margaret. Willie, after many failures and after a long 
illness, which we were in hopes had purified him from 
all his defects, had gone to London to go through some 
studies at the London University and in the College 
called the English Presbyterian, to which in our warm 
Free Churchism we had attached ourselves. He took 
my MS. to Colburn, then one of the chief publishers 
of novels, and for some weeks nothing was heard of it, 
when one morning came a big blue envelope containing 
an agreement by which Mr Colburn pledged himself to 
publish my book on the half-profit system, accompanied 
by a letter from a Mr S. W. Fullom, full of compliments 



'MRS MARGARET MAITLAND. 1 9 

as to its originality, &c. I have forgotten the terms now, 
but then I knew them by heart. The delight, the 
astonishment, the amusement of this was not to be 
described. First and foremost, it was the most extra- 
ordinary joke that ever was. Maggie's story ! My 
mother laughed and cried with pride and happiness 
and amazement unbounded. She thought Mr S. W. 
Fullom a great authority and a man of genius, and 
augured the greatest advantage to me from his acquaint- 
ance and that of all the great literary persons about 
him. This wonderful event must have come most 
fortunately to comfort the family under new trouble ; 
for things had again gone wrong with poor Willie — he 
had fallen once more into his old vice and debt and 
misery. He had still another term in London before 
he finished the course of study he was engaged in ; 
and when the time came for his return I was sent with 
him to take care of him. It was almost the first time 
I had ever been separated from my mother. One visit 
of two or three weeks to the Hasties of Fairy Knowe, 
which had its part too in my little development, had 
been my only absence from home ; and how my mother 
made up her mind to this three months' parting I do 
not know, but for poor Willie's sake everything was 
possible. We had lodgings near Bruton Crescent in a 
street where our cousins, Frank and Tom Oliphant, were 
in the same house. We had the parlour, I remember, 
where I sat in the mornings when Willie was at his 
lectures. Afterwards he came in and I went out with 
him to walk. We used to walk through all the curious 
little passages leading, I believe, to Holborn, and full of 
old bookshops, which were our delight. And he took 
me to see the parks and various places — though not those 
to which I should suppose a girl from the country would 
be taken. The bookshops are the things I remember 
best. He was as good as he could be, docile and sweet- 
tempered and never rebellious ; and I was a little dragon 
watching over him with remorseless anxiety. I dis- 



20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

covered, I remember, a trifling bill which had not been 
included when his debts were paid, and I took my small 
fierce measures that it should never reach my mother's 
ears, nor trouble her. I ordained that for two days in 
the week we should give up our mid-day meal and make 
up at the evening one, which we called supper, for the 
want of it. On these days, accordingly, he did not come 
home, or came only to fetch me, and we went out for 
a long walk, sustaining ourselves with a bun until it 
should be time to come home to tea. He agreed to this 
ordinance without a murmur — my poor, good, tender- 
hearted, simple-minded Willie; and the little bill was 
paid and never known of at home. 

Curiously enough, I remember little of the London 
sights or of any impression they made upon me. We 
knew scarcely anybody. Mrs Hamilton, the sister of 
Edward Irving's wife and a relation, took some notice 
of us, but she was almost the only individual I knew. 
And my heart was too full of my charge to think much 
of the cousin up-stairs with whom my fate was soon 
to be connected. We had known scarcely anything of 
each other before. We were new acquaintances, though 
relations. He took me, I remember, to the National 
Gallery, full of of expectation as to the effect the pictures 
would have upon me. And I — was struck dumb with 
disappointment. I had never seen any pictures. I 
can't tell what I expected to see — something that never 
was on sea or shore. My ideal of absolute ignorance 
was far too high-flown, I suppose, for anything human. 
I was horribly disappointed, and dropped down from 
untold heights of imagination to a reality I could not 
understand. I remember, in the humiliation of my 
downfall, and in the sense of my cousin's astonished 
disappointment at my want of appreciation, fixing upon 
a painting — a figure of the Virgin in a Crucifixion, I 
think by Correggio, but I am quite vague about it — 
as the thing I liked best. I chose that as Words- 
worth's little boy put forth the weathercock at Kilve 



A GREAT DISILLUSIONMENT. 21 

— in despair at my own incapacity to admire. I re- 
member also the heads of the old Jews in Leonardo's 
Christ in the Temple. The face of the young Re- 
deemer with its elaborate crisped hair shocked me with 
a sense of profanity, but the old heads I could believe 
in. And that was all I got out of my first glimpse 
into the world of art, I cannot recollect whether it 
was then or after, that an equally great disillusionment 
in the theatre befell me. The play was "Twelfth Night," 
and the lovely beginning of that play — 

" That strain again ! it had a dying fall " 

— was given by a nobody in white tights lying on a 
sofa and balancing a long leg as he spoke. The dis- 
gust, the disenchantment, the fury remain in my mind 
now. Once more I came tumbling down from my ideal 
and all my anticipations. Mrs Charles Kean was Viola, 
and she was middle'-aged and stout ! ^ I was more 
than disappointed, I was angry and disgusted and 
cast down. What was the good of anything if that 
was all that Shakespeare and the great Masters could 
come to? 

I remember after this a day at Greenwich and Wool- 
wich, and the sight of the Arsenal, though why that 
should have made an impression on my memory, heaven 
knows ! I remember the pyramids of balls, and some 
convicts whose appearance gave me a thrill of horror, 

— I think they were convicts, though why convicts 
should be at Woolwich I can't tell — perhaps it was 
a mistake. And then Mr Colburn kindly — I thought 
most kindly, and thanked him avec effusion — gave me 
;^I50 for 'Margaret Maitland.' I remember walking 
along the street with delightful elation, thinking that, 
after all, I was worth something — and not to be hustled 
about. I remember, too, getting the first review of 
my book in the twilight of a wintry dark afternoon, 
and reading it by the firelight — always half-amused at 

1 Probably under thirty. — Ed. 



22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

the thought that it was me who was being thus dis- 
cussed in the newspapers. It was the ' Athenaeum,' 
and it was on the whole favourable. Of course this 
event preceded by a couple of months the transaction 
with Mr Colburn. I think the book was in its third 
edition before he offered me that ;^I50. I remember 
no reviews except that one of the ' Athenaeum,' nor 
any particular effect which my success produced in me, 
except that sense of elation, I cannot think why the 
book succeeded so well. When I read it over some 
years after, I felt nothing but shame at its foolish little 
polemics and opinions. I suppose there must have been 
some breath of youth and sincerity in it which touched 
people, and there had been no Scotch stories for a 
long time. Lord Jeffrey, then an old man and very 
near his end, sent me a letter of sweet praise, which 
filled my mother with rapture and myself with an 
abashed gratitude. I was very young. Oddly enough, 
it has always remained a matter of doubt with me 
whether the book was published in 1849 o'' 1850. I 
thought the former; but Geraldine Macpherson, whom 
I met in London for the first time a day or two before 
it was published, declared it to be 1850, from the fact 
that tJiat was the year of her marriage. If a woman 
remembers any date, it must be the date of her mar- 
riage ! 1 so I don't doubt Geddie was right. Anyhow, 
if it was 1850, I was then only twenty-two, and in 
some things very young for my age, as in others per- 
haps older than my years. I was wonderfully little 
moved by the business altogether. I had a great 
pleasure in writing, but the success and the three edi- 
tions had no particular effect upon my mind. For 
one thing, I saw very few people. We had no society. 
My father had a horror of strangers, and would never 
see any one who came to the house, which was a con- 
tinual wet blanket to my mother's cordial, hospitable 
nature; but she had given up struggling long before 

1 It was 1849. — Eo. 



'CALEB FIELD.' 23 

my time, and I grew up without any idea of the 
pleasures and companions of youth. I did not know 
them, and therefore did not miss them ; but I daresay 
this helped to make me — not indifferent, rather uncon- 
scious, of what might in other circumstances have 
" turned my head." My head was as steady as a rock. 
I had nobody to praise me except my mother and 
Frank, and their applause — well, it was delightful, it 
was everything in the world — it was life, — but it did 
not count. They were part of me, and I of them, 
and we were all in it. After a while it came to be 
the custom that I should every night " read what I 
had written " to them before I went to bed. They 
were very critical sometimes, and I felt while I was 
reading whether my little audience was with me or 
not, which put a good deal of excitement into the 
performance. But that was all the excitement I had. 
I began another book called ' Caleb Field,' about the 
Plague in London, the very night I had finished ' Mar- 
garet Maitland.' I had been reading Defoe, and got 
the subject into my head. It came to one volume only, 
and I took a great deal of trouble about a Noncon- 
formist minister who spoke in antitheses very carefully 
constructed. I don't think it attracted much notice, 
but I don't remember. Other matters, events even of 
our uneventful life, took so much more importance in 
life than these books — nay, it must be a kind of affec- 
tation to say that, for the writing ran through every- 
thing. But then it was also subordinate to everything, 
to be pushed aside for any little necessity. I had no 
table even to myself, much less a room to work in, 
but sat at the corner of the family table with my writ- 
ing-book, with everything going on as if I had been 
making a shirt instead of writing a book. Our rooms 
in those days were sadly wanting in artistic arrange- 
ment. The table was in the middle of the room, the 
centre round which everybody sat with the candles or 
lamp upon it. My mother sat always at needle-work 



24 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

of some kind, and talked to whoever might be present, 
and I took my share in the conversation, going on all 
the same with my story, the little groups of imaginary 
persons, these other talks evolving themselves quite un- 
disturbed. It would put me out now to have some one 
sitting at the same table talking while I worked — at least 
I would think it put me out, with that sort of conven- 
tionalism which grows upon one. But up to this date, 
1888, I have never been shut up in a separate room, or 
hedged off with any observances. My study, all the 
study I have ever attained to, is the little second draw- 
ing-room where all the (feminine) life of the house goes 
on; and I don't think I have ever had two hours un- 
disturbed (except at night, when everybody is in bed) 
during my whole literary life. Miss Austen, I believe, 
wrote in the same way, and very much for the same 
reason; but at her period the natural flow of life took 
another form. The family were half ashamed to have 
it known that she was not just a young lady like the 
others, doing her embroidery. Mine were quite pleased 
to magnify me, and to be proud of my work, but always 
with a hidden sense that it was an admirable joke, and 
no idea that any special facilities or retirement was 
necessary. My mother, I believe, would have felt her 
pride and rapture much checked, almost humiliated, if 
she had conceived that I stood in need of any artificial 
aids of that or any other description. That would at 
once have made the work unnatural to her eyes, and 
also to mine. I think the first time I ever secluded my- 
self for my work was years after it had become my 
profession and sole dependence — when I was living after 
my widowhood in a relation's house, and withdrew with 
my book and my inkstand from the family drawing- 
room out of a little conscious ill-temper which made me 
feel guilty, notwithstanding that the retirement was so 
very justifiable ! But I did not feel it to be so, neither 
did the companions from whom I withdrew. 

After this period our poor Willie became a minister 



A NORTHUMBRIAN VILLAGE. 25 

of the English Presbyterian Church, then invested 
with glory by the Free Church, its real parent, which 
in our fervid imagination we had by this time dressed 
up with all sorts of traditional splendour. It, we 
flattered ourselves, was the direct successor of the 
two thousand seceders of 1661 (was that the date?). 
There had been a downfall, we allowed, into Uni- 
tarianism and indifference; but this was the real, and 
a very respectable, tradition. Willie went to a very 
curious little place in the wilds of Northumberland, 
where my mother and I decided — with hopes strangely 
wild, it seems to me now, after all that had gone 
before — that he was at length to do well, and be as 
strenuous to his duty as he was gentle in temper 
and tender in heart. Poor Willie ! It was a sort of 
show village with pretty flowery cottages and gardens, 
in a superior one of which he lived, or rather lodged, 
the income being very small and the position humble. 
It was, however, so far as my recollection goes, suffi- 
ciently like a Scotch parish to convince us that the 
church and parsonage were quite exotic, and the 
humble chapel the real religious centre of the place. 
A great number of the people were, I believe, Presby- 
terians, and the continuance of their worship and little 
strait ceremony undoubted from the time of the Puri- 
tans, though curiously enough the minister was known 
to his flock by the title of the priest, I don't in the 
least recollect what the place was like, yet a whiff of 
the rural air tinged with peat or wood, and of the 
roses with which the cottages were garlanded, and an 
impression of the subdued light through the green- 
ish small window half veiled in flowers, remains with 
me, — very sweet, homely, idyllic, like something in a 
pathetic country story of peace overshadowed with 
coming trouble. There was a shadow of a ruined castle 
in the background, I think Norham ; but all is vague, 
— I have not the clear memory of what I saw in my 
youth that many people retain. I see a little collec- 



26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

tion of pictures, but the background is all vague. The 
only vehicle we could get to take us to Berwick was, 
I recollect, a cart, carefully arranged with straw- 
covered sacking to make us comfortable. The man 
who drove it was very anxious to be engaged and 
taken with us as " Miss Wilson's coachman." Why 
mine, or why we should have taken a rustic " Jockey- 
to-the-fair" for a coachman, if we had wanted such 
an article, I don't know. I suppose there must have 
been some sort of compliment implied to my beaux 
yeux, or I should not have remembered this. We left 
Willie with thankful hearts, yet an ache of fear. 
Surely in that peaceful humble quiet, with those lowly 
sacred duties and all his goodness and kindness, he 
would do well ! I don't remember how long it con- 
tinued. So long as he kept up the closest correspon- 
dence, writing every second day and giving a full 
account of himself, there was an uneasy satisfaction at 
home. But there is always a prophetic ache in the 
heart when such calamity is on the way. 

One day, without warning, except that his letters 
had begun to fail a little, my mother received an 
anonymous letter about him. She went off that even- 
ing, travelling all night to Edinburgh, which was the 
quickest way, and then to Berwick. She was very 
little used to travelling, and she was over sixty, which 
looked a great age then. I suppose the trains were 
slower in those days, for I know she got to Edinburgh 
only in the morning, and then had to go on by the 
other line to Berwick, and then drive six miles to the' 
village, where she found all the evil auguries fulfilled, 
and poor Willie fallen again helpless into that Slough 
of Despond. She remained a few miserable days, and 
then brought him back with her, finally defeated in 
the battle which he was quite unfit to wage. He must 
have been then, I think, about thirty-three, in the 
prime of strength and youth ; but except for a waver- 
ing and uncertain interval now and then, he never got 



A SORROWFUL HOME-COMING. 27 

out of the mire nor was able to support himself again. 
I remember the horrible moment of his coming home. 
Frank and I went down, I suppose, to the ferry at 
Birkenhead to meet the travellers. We were all very 
grave — not a word of reproach did any one say, but to 
be cheerful, to talk about nothing, was impossible. 
We drove up in silence to the house where we lived, 
asking a faint question now and then about the 
journey. I remember that Willie had a little dog 
called Brownie with him, and the relief this creature 
was, which did not understand being shut up in the 
carriage and made little jumps at the window, and 
had to be petted and restrained. Brownie brought a 
little movement, an involuntary laugh at his antics, to 
break the horrible silence — an angel could scarcely 
have done more for us. When we got home there 
was the settling down in idleness, the hopeless de- 
cision of any wretched possibility there might be for 
him. The days and weeks and months in which he 
smoked and read old novels and the papers, and, most 
horrible of all, got to content himself with that life ! 
The anguish in all our hearts looking at him, not 
knowing what to do, sometimes assailed by gusts of 
impatience, always closing down in the hopelessness of 
it; the incapacity to find or suggest anything, the 
dreary spectacle of that content is before me, with 
almost as keen a sense of the misery as if it had been 
yesterday. 

I had been in the habit of copying out carefully, quite 
proud of my neat MS., all my books, now becoming a 
recognized feature of the family life. It struck us all as 
a fine idea that Willie might copy them for me, and 
retrieve a sort of fictitious independence by getting 10 
per cent upon the price of them ; and I really think he 
felt quite comfortable on this. Of course, the sole use 
of the copying was the little corrections and improve- 
ments I made in going over my work again. 

It was after this that my cousin Frank came upon a 



28 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

visit. We had seen, and yet had not seen, a great deal 
of each other in London during the three months I had 
spent there with Willie ; but my mind had been pre- 
occupied with Willie chiefly, and a little with my book. 
When Frank made me the extraordinary proposal for 
which I was totally unprepared, that we should, as he 
said, build up the old Drumthwacket together, my only 
answer was an alarmed negative, the idea never having 
entered my mind. But in six months or so things 
changed. It is not a matter into which I can enter 
here. 

In the spring of 185 1 my mother and I were in 
Edinburgh, and there made the acquaintance of the 
Wilsons, our second cousins, — George Wilson being at 
that time Professor of something which meant chemistry, 
but was not called so. His mother was an exceedingly 
bright, vivacious old lady, a universal devourer of books, 
and with that kind of scientific tendency which made her 
encourage her boys to form museums, and collect fossils, 
butterflies, &c. I forget how my mother and she got on, 
but I always liked her. 

George Wilson was an excellent talker, full of banter 
and a kind of humour, full of ability, too, I believe, 
writing very amusing letters and talking very amusing 
talk, which was all the more credit to him as he was in 
very bad health, kept alive by the fact that he could 
eat, and so maintain a modicum of strength — enough 
to get on by. There were two daughters — Jessie and 
Jeanie — the younger of whom became my brother 
Frank's wife; and the eldest son, who was married, 
lived close by, and was then, I think, doing literary 
work for Messrs Nelson, reading for them and advising 
them about books. He very soon after this migrated 
to Canada, and became eventually President of Uni- 
versity College, Toronto, and Sir Daniel in the end of 
his life. 

My mother at this time renewed acquaintance with 
Dr Moir of Musselburgh, an old friend of hers, who had, 



A BLACKWOOD GROUP. 29 

I believe, attended me when, as a very small child, I fell 
into the fire, or rather against the bars of the grate, 
marking my arm in a way which it never recovered. 
This excellent man, whom everybody loved, was the 
Delta of ' Blackwood's Magazine,' and called everywhere 
by that name. He had written much gentle poetry, and 
one story a la Gait called ' Mansie Wauch,' neither of 
which were good enough for him, yet got him a certain 
reputation, especially some pathetic verses about children 
he had lost, which went to the heart of every mother who 
had lost children, my own mother first and foremost. 
He had married a very handsome stately lady, a little 
conventional, but with an unfailing and ready kindness 
which often made her mannerisms quite gracious and 
beautiful. There was already a handsome daughter 
married, though under twenty, and many other fine, tall, 
well-bred, handsome creatures, still in long hair and short 
skirts, growing up, "I think I was left behind to pay a 
visit when my mother returned home, and then had a 
kind of introduction to Edinburgh Hterary society, in one 
case very important for myself. For in one expedition 
we made, Major Blackwood, one of the publishing firm, 
and brother of the editor of the ' Magazine,' was of the 
party ; and my long connection with his family thus 
began. He was accompanied by a young man, a Mr 
Cupples, of whom, except his name, I have no recollec- 
tion, but who was the author of a sea-story then, I think, 
going on in ' Blackwood,' called the ' Green Hand,' and 
who, it was hoped, would be as successful as the author 
of ' Tom Cringle ' and the ' Cruise of the Midge,' who had 
been a very effective contributor twenty years before. 
All I remember of him was that my cousin Daniel 
Wilson, who was also of the party, indignantly pointed 
out to me the airs which this young author gave himself, 
" as if it was such a great thing to be a contributor to 
' Blackwood ' ! " I am afraid I thought it zvas a great 
thing, and had not remarked the young author's airs ; 
but Daniel was of the opposite camp. Major Blackwood, 



30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

who interested me most, was a mild soldierly man, 
with the gentlest manners and drooping eyelids, which 
softened his look, or so at least it appears to me at the 
end of so many years. 

I remember that one of the places we visited was 
Wallyford, where was the house in which I was born, 
but of which I had no recollection. It must have been a 
pleasant homely house, with a projecting half turret enclos- 
ing the staircase, as in many houses in the Lothians, the 
passages and kitchen down-stairs floored with red brick, 
and a delightful large low drawing-room above, with five 
greenish windows looking out upon Arthur's Seat in 
the distance, and a ghost of Edinburgh.^ That room 
charmed me greatly, and in after days I used to think 
of becoming its tenant and living there, for the sake of 
the landscape and the associations and that pretty old 
room ; but before I could have carried out such an 
idea, even had it been more real than a fancy, the 
pretty house was pulled down, and a square, aggres- 
sive, and very commonplace new farmhouse built in its 
place. 

The consequence of my introduction to Major Black- 
wood was, that some time in the course of the following 
months I sent him the manuscript of my story ' Katie 
Stewart ' : a little romance of my mother's family, 
gleaned from her recollections and descriptions. The 
scene of this story was chiefly laid in old Kellie Castle, 
which I was not then aware was the home of our own 
ancestors, from whom it had passed long before into the 
hands of the Erskines, Earls of Kellie — with the daughter 
of which house Katie Stewart had been brought up. 
She was my mother's great-aunt, and had lived to a 
great age. She had seen Prince Charlie enter Edin- 
burgh, and had told all her experiences to my mother, who 
told them to me, so that I never was quite sure whether 
I had not been Katie Stewart's contemporary in my own 

1 This house is the scene of the story of 'Isabel Dysart,' reprinted since Mrs 
Oliphant's death. — Ed. 



MARRIAGE. 31 

person. And this was her love-tale. I received proofs 
of this story on the morning of my wedding-day, and 
thus my connection with the firm of Blackwood began. 
They were fond of nicknames, and I was known among 
them by the name of " Katie " for a long time, as I 
discovered lately (1896) in some old letters. I suppose 
they thought me so young and simple (as they say in 
these letters) that the girl's name was appropriate to me. 
I was not tall (" middle height " we called it in those 
days), and very inexperienced, — "so simple and yet self- 
possessed," I am glad to say Major Blackwood reports 
of me. I was only conscious of being dreadfully shy. 

We were married in Birkenhead on the 4th May 1852, 
— and the old home, which had come to consist of 
such incongruous elements, was more or less broken up. 
My brother Frank, discontented and wounded partly 
by my marriage, partly by the determination to abandon 
him and follow me" to London, which my father and 
mother had formed, married too, hastily, but very suc- 
cessfully in a way as it turned out, and so two new 
houses were formed out of the partial ruins of the old. 
Had the circumstances been different — had they stayed 
in Birkenhead and I gone alone with my husband to 
London — some unhappiness might have been spared. 
Who can tell t There would have been other unhappiness 
to take its place. They settled in a quaint little house in 
a place called Park Village, old-fashioned, semi-rustic, 
and pretty enough, with a long strip of garden stretching 
down to the edge of a deep cutting of the railway, where 
we used to watch the trains passing far below. The 
garden was gay with flowers, quantities of brilliant 
poppies of all colours I remember, which I liked for the 
colour and hated for the heavy ill odour of them, and 
the sensation as of evil flowers. Our house in Harring- 
ton Square was very near: it looked all happy enough 
but was not, for my husband and my mother did not 
get on. My father sat passive, taking no notice, with 
his paper, not perceiving much, I believe. 



32 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

My child's birth made a momentary gleam of joy soon 
lost in clouds. 

My mother became ailing and concealed it, and kept 
alive — or at least kept her last illness off by sheer stress 
of will until my second child was born a year and a day 
after the first. She was with me, but sank next day 
into an illness from which she never rose. She died 
in September 1854, suffering no attendance but mine, 
though she concealed from me how ill she was for a 
long time. I remember the first moment in which I 
had any real fear, speaking to the doctor with a sudden 
impulse, in the front of her door, all in a green shade 
with the waving trees, demanding his real opinion. I 
do not think I had any understanding of the gravity of 
the circumstances. He shook his head, and I knew — 
the idea having never entered my mind before that she 
was to die. I recollect going away, walking home as 
in a dream, not able to go to her, to look at her, from 
whom I had never had a secret, with this secret in my 
soul that must be told least of all to her; and the 
sensation that here was something which would not 
lighten after a while as all my troubles had always done, 
and pass away. I had never come face to face with the 
inevitable before. But there was no daylight here — no 
hope — no getting over it. Then there followed a struggle 
of a month or two, much suffering on her part, and a 
long troubled watch and nursing on mine. At the very 
end I remember the struggle against overwhelming sleep, 
after nights and days in incessant anxiety, which made 
me so bitterly ashamed of the limits of wretched nature. 
To want to sleep while she was dying seemed so un- 
natural and horrible. I never had come within sight of 
death before. And, oh me ! when all was over, mingled 
with my grief there was — how can I say it .'' — something 
like a dreadful relief 

Within a few months after, my little Marjorie, my 
second child, died on the 8th February; and then with 
deep shame and anguish I felt what I suppose was 



MORE DISILLUSIONMENT. 33 

another wretched limit of nature. My dearest mother, 
who had been everything to me all my life, and to whom 
I was everything; the companion, friend, counsellor, 
minstrel, story-teller, with whom I had never wanted 
for constant interest, entertainment, and fellowship, — 
did not give me, when she died, a pang so deep as the 
loss of the little helpless baby, eight months old, I miss 
my mother till this moment when I am nearly as old 
as she was (sixty, loth June 1888); I think instinctively 
still of asking her something, referring to her for in- 
formation, and I dream constantly of being a girl with 
her at home. But at that moment her loss was nothing 
to me in comparison with the loss of my little child. 

I lost another infant after that, a day old. My spirit 
sank completely under it. I used to go about saying to 
myself, " A little while and ye shall not see me," with a 
longing to get to the end and have all safe — for my 
one remaining, my eldest, my Maggie seemed as if she 
too must be taken out of my arms. People will say it 
was an animal instinct perhaps. Neither of these little 
ones could speak to me or exchange an idea or show 
love, and yet their withdrawal was like the sun going 
out from the sky — life remained, the daylight continued, 
but all was different. It seems strange to me now at 
this long distance — but so it was. 

The glimpse of society I had during my married life 
in London was not of a very elevating kind ; or per- 
haps I — with my shyness and complete unacquaintance 
with the ways of people who gave parties and paid 
incessant visits — was only unable to take any pleasure 
in it, or get beyond the outside petty view, and the same 
strange disappointment and disillusion with which the 
pictures and the stage had filled me, bringing down my 
ridiculous impossible ideal to the ground. I have tried 
to illustrate my youthful feelings about this several times 
in words. I had expected everything that was super- 
lative — beautiful conversation, all about books and the 
finest subjects, great people whose notice would be an 
C 



34 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



honour, poets and painters, and all the sympathy of 
congenial minds, and the feast of reason and the flow 
of soul. But it is needless to say I found none of these 
things. We went "out," not very often, to parties where 
there was always a good deal of the literary element, but 
of a small kind, and where I found everything very com- 
monplace and poor, not at all what I expected. I never 
did myself any justice, as a certain little hon-hunter, a 
Jewish patroness of the arts, who lived somewhere in 
the region about Harley Street, said. That is to say, 
I got as quickly as I could into a corner and stood there, 
rather wistfully wishing to know people, but not ventur- 
ing to make any approach, waiting till some one should 
speak to me; which much exasperated my aspiring 
hostess, who had picked me up as a new novelist, and 
meant me to help to amuse her guests, which I had not 
the least idea how to do. I fear I must have been rather 
exasperating to my husband, who was more given to 
society than I, and tried in vain (as I can now see) to 
form me and make me attend to my social duties, which 
even in such a small matter as returning calls I was terri- 
bly neglectful of — out of sheer shyness and gaucherie, I 
think ; for I was always glad and grateful when anybody 
would insist on making friends with me, as a few people 
did. There was an old clergyman, Mr Laing, who did, 
I remember, and more or less his wife — he especially. 
He liked me, I think, and complimented me by saying 
he did not like literary ladies — a sort of thing people 
are rather disposed to say to me. And Lance (the 
painter of fruits and flowers and still life), who was a 
wit in his way, was also a great friend of mine. He 
dared me to put him in a book, and I took him at his 
word and did so, making a very artless representation, 
and using some of his own stories ; so that everybody 
recognised the sketch, which was done in mere fun and 
liking, and pleased him very much — the only actual bit 
of real life I ever took for a book. It was in ' Zaidee,' I 
think. 



MRS S. C. HALL. 35 

Among my literary acquaintances was the Mr Fullom 
who had read for old Colburn my first book, and whose 
acquaintance as an eminent literary man and great 
notability we had all thought at home it would be such 
a fine thing to make. He turned out a very small per- 
sonage indeed, a solemn man, with a commonplace wife, 
people whom it was marvellous to think of as intellectual. 
He wrote a book called ' The Marvels of Science,' a dull 
piece of manufacture, for which by some wonderful chance 
he received a gold medal, Fiir Ktmst, from the King of 
Hanover. I think I see him moving solemnly about the 
little drawing-room with this medal on the breast, and 
the wife following him. He soon stalked away into the 
unknown, and I saw him no more. I forget how I be- 
came acquainted with the S. C. Halls, who used to ask 
me to their parties, and who were literary people of the 
most prominent and conventional type, rather satisfying 
to the sense on the whole, as the sort of thing one ex- 
pected. Mrs Hall had retired upon the laurels got by 
one or two Irish novels, and was surrounded by her 
husband with the atmosphere of admiration, which was 
the right thing for a " fair " writer. He took her very 
seriously, and she accepted the 7'dlc, though without, I 
think, any particular setting up of her own standard. 
I used to think and say that she looked at me inquisi- 
tively, a little puzzled to know what kind of humbug 
I was, all being humbugs. But she was a kind woman 
all the same ; and I never forget the sheaf of white lilies 
she sent us for my child's christening, for which I feel 
grateful still. He was certainly a humbug of the old 
mellifluous Irish kind — the sort of man whose specious 
friendlinesses, compliments, and " blarney " were of the 
most innocent kind, not calculated to deceive anybody, 
but always amusing. He told Irish stories capitally. 

They had the most wonderful collection of people at 
their house, and she would stand and smile and shake 
hands, till one felt she must stiffen so, and had lost all 
consciousness who anybody was. He on his side was 



36 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

never tired, always insinuating, jovial, affectionate. It 
was at their house, I think, that we met the Hewitts — 
Mary Howitt, a mild, kind, delightful woman, who 
frightened me very much, I remember, by telling me of 
many babies whom she had lost through some defective 
valve in the heart, which she said was somehow con- 
nected with too much mental work on the part of the 
mother, — a foolish thing, I should think, yet the same 
thing occurred twice to myself. It alarmed and sad- 
dened me terribly — but I liked her greatly. Not so 
her husband, who did not please me at all. For a 
short time we met them everywhere in our small circle, 
and then they too disappeared, going abroad, I think. 
There was a great deal about spiritualism (so called) in 
the air at this time — its first development in England, — 
and the Howitts' eldest daughter was an art medium 
producing wonderful scribble-scrabbles, which it was the 
wonder of wonders to find her mother, so full of sense 
and truth, so genuine herself, full of enthusiasm about. 

I remember a day at the Halls, which must have 
been in the summer of 1853. They had then a pretty 
house at Addleston, near Chertsey. My husband and I 
travelled down by train in company with a dark, dash- 
ing person, an American lady, whom, on arriving at the 
station, we found to be going to the Halls too. She 
and I were put into their brougham to drive there, while 
the gentlemen walked ; and she did what she could in 
a patronising way to find out who I was. She thought 
me, I supposed, the poor little shy wife of some artist, 
whom the Halls were being kind to, or something of that 
humble kind. She turned out to be a literary person 
of great pretensions, calling herself Grace Greenwood, 
though that was not her real name, — and I was amused 
to find a paragraph about myself, as " a little homely 
Scotchwoman," in the book which she wrote when she 
got back. Two incidents of this entertainment remain 
very clear in my memory. One was, that being placed 
at table beside Mr Frost, the academician, who was 



A SINGING MANDARIN. ^^ 

very deaf and very gentle and kind, I was endeavouring 
with many mental struggles to repeat to him something 
that had produced a laugh, and which his wistful look had 
asked to understand, when suddenly one of those hushes 
which sometimes come over a large company occurred, 
and my voice came out distinct — to my own horrified 
consciousness, at least — a sound of terror and shame 
to me. The other was, that Gavan Duffy, one of the 
recent Irish rebels, and my husband began to discuss, 
I suppose, national characteristics, or what they believed 
to be such, when the Irishman mentioned gravely and 
with some heat that the frolic and the wit usually 
attributed to his countrymen were a mere popular de- 
lusion, while the Scotchman with equal earnestness 
repudiated the caution and prudence ascribed to his 
race; which was whimsical enough to be remembered. 

Another recollection of one of the Halls' evening 
parties in town at a considerably later period rises 
like a picture before me. They were fond of every 
kind of lion and wonder, great and small. Rosa Bon- 
heur, then at the height of her reputation, was there 
one evening, a round-faced, good-humoured woman, 
with hair cut short and divided at one side like a man's, 
and indeed not very distinct in the matter of sex so far 
as dress and appearance went. There was there also a 
Chinese mandarin in full costume, smiling blandly upon 
the company, and accompanied by a missionary, who had 
the charge of him. By some means or other the China- 
man was made to sing what we were informed was a senti- 
mental ballad, exceedingly touching and romantic. It was 
like nothing so much as the howl of a dog, one of those 
grave pieces of canine music which my poor old New- 
foundland used to give forth when his favourite organ- 
grinder came into the street. (Merry's performance 
was the most comical thing imaginable. There was 
one organ among many which touched his tenderest 
feelings. When it appeared once a-week, he rushed to 
it, seated himself beside the man, listened till rapture 



38 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

and sentiment were wound up to the highest pitch, 
and then, lifting up his nose and his voice to heaven, 
— sang. There could be no doubt that the dear dog 
was giving forth all the poetry of his being in that 
appalling noise, — his emotion, his sentiment, his pro- 
found seriousness were indisputable, while any human 
being within reach was overwhelmed and helpless with 
laughter.) The Chinaman sang exactly like Merry, with 
the same effect. Rosa Bonheur, I suppose, was more 
civil than nous autres, and her efforts to restrain the 
uncontrollable laugh were superhuman. She almost 
swallowed her handkerchief in -the effort to conceal it. 
I can see her as in a picture, the central figure, with 
her bushy short hair, and her handkerchief in her mouth. 
All my recollections are like pictures, not continuous, only 
a scene detached and conspicuous here and there. 

Miss Muloch was another of the principal figures per- 
ceptible in the somewhat dimmed panorama of that far- 
off life. Her friends the Lovells lived in Mornington 
Crescent, which was close to our little house in Harring- 
ton Square, — all in a remote region near Regent's Park, 
upon the Hampstead Road, where it seems very strange 
to me we should have lived, and which, I suppose, is 
dreadfully shabby and out-of-the-way. Perhaps it was 
shabby then, one's ideas change so greatly. Miss 
Muloch lived in a small house in a street a little 
farther off even in the wilds than ours. She was a tall 
young woman with a slim pliant figure, and eyes that 
had a way of fixing the eyes of her interlocutor in a 
manner which did not please my shy fastidiousness. It 
was embarrassing, as if she meant to read the other upon 
whom she gazed, — a pretension which one resented. It 
was merely, no doubt, a fashion of what was the intense 
school of the time, Mrs Browning did the same thing the 
only time I met her, and this to one quite indisposed to 
be read. But Dinah was always kind, enthusiastic, some- 
what didactic and apt to teach, and much looked up 
to by her little band of young women. She too had 



LITERARY LIONS. 39 

little parties, at one of which I remember Miss Cushman, 
the actress, in a deep recitative, without any apparent 
tune in it, like the voice of a skipper at sea I thought it, 
giving forth Kingsley's song of "The Sands of Dee." I 
was rather afraid of the performer, though long afterwards 
she came to see me in Paris when I was in much sorrow, 
and her tenderness and feeling gave me the sensation of 
suddenly meeting a friend in the darkness, of whose 
existence there I had no conception. There used to 
be also at Miss Muloch's parties an extraordinary being 
in a wheeled chair, with an imperfect face (as if it had 
been somehow left unfinished in the making), a Mr Smed- 
ley, a terrible cripple, supposed to be kept together by 
some framework of springs and supports, of whom the 
story was told that he had determined, though the son 
of a rich man, to maintain himself, and make himself a 
reputation, and had succeeded in doing both, as the writer 
— of all things in the world — of sporting novels. He was 
the author of ' Lewis Arundel ' and ' Frank Fairleigh,' 
both I believe athletic books, and full of feats of horse- 
manship and strength ; which was sufficiently pathetic — 
though the appearance of this poor man somewhat 
frightened me too. 

Mr Lovell, the father of one of Miss Muloch's chief 
friends, was the author of " The Wife's Secret," a play 
lately revived, and which struck me when I saw it as 
one of the most conventional and unreal possible, very 
curious to come out of that sober city man. All the 
guests at these little assemblies were something of the 
same kind. One looked at them rather as one looked at 
the figures in Madame Tussaud's, wondering if they were 
waxwork or life — wondering' in the other case whether 
the commonplace outside might not cover a painter or a 
poet or something equally fine — whose ethereal qualities 
were all invisible to the ordinary eye. 

What I liked best in the way of society was when we 
went out occasionally quite late in the evening, Frank 
and I, after he had left off work in his studio, and went 



40 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

to the house of another painter uninvited, unexpected, 
always welcome, — I with my work. Alexander John- 
stone's house was the one to which we went most. I 
joined the wife in her little drawing-room, while he went 
up-stairs to the studio. (They all had the drawing-room 
proper of the house, the first-floor room, for their 
studios.) We women talked below of our subjects, as 
young wives and young mothers do — with a little needle- 
work and a little gossip. The men above smoked and 
talked their subjects, investigating the picture of the 
moment, going over it with advice and criticism ; no 
doubt giving each other their opinions of other artists 
and other pictures too. And then we supped, frugally, 
cheerfully, and if there was anything of importance in 
the studio the wives went up to look at it, or see what 
progress it had made since the last time, after supper. 
And then we walked home again. They paid us a 
return visit some days after of just the same kind. If 
I knew them now, which I no longer do, I would ask 
them to dinner, and they me, and most likely we would 
not enjoy it at all. But those simple evenings were very 
pleasant. Our whole life was upon very simple lines at 
this period : we dined in the middle of the day, and our 
little suppers were not of a kind to require elaborate 
preparation if another pair came in unexpectedly. It 
was true society in its way. Nothing of the kind seems 
possible now. 



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